Heartstopper star to make West End debut in Clarkston

Heartstopper star Joe Locke will be released in this autumn in a game about two young men connected to the night shift in a rural USA of the United States.

Locke will currently play the new stage role this year after taking part in the three series of Hit Netflix show about two classmates who are in love.

The 21 -year -old will take part in Clarksston, which follows two men from his twenty men from the opposite ends of the United States, who meet while working at Costco.

Locke told the BBC News that he was “very excited” at West End and added that his new role matched with the desire to play “flawed characters with a bit bitten …”.

Clarksston is written by Samuel d Hunter, known for the 2012 Play The Whale. Later Oscar won Brendan Fraser When a film is taken.

The producers have not yet announced the venue or the dates of running for the British production, but said that BBC will be opened in a West End Theater in autumn.

The game in Washington, Clarkston, starts with a Costco employee named Chris Working Night Shift when he met Jake, a young gay man from Connecticut.

Jake has Huntington disease, a degenerative neurological condition that causes involuntary movements. After finding that he could no longer drive a car during a journey to the west, Clarksston accidentally began to accidentally.

“This city is a city in a small place,” Locke explained. “Jake really has a lot of layers in the game. Many themes are about the different experiences of classes and characters.”

Meanwhile, Chris is struggling with a tense relationship with his mother who is a drug addict.

Locke, who is accustomed to depicting young men struggling with their identities, said, “I really like them, a little bit of a bit of a gray area.

“Everyone is flawed in some ways. And in my career, I’m lucky enough to play a few flawed characters in my career, and Jake is no different. And this fun lice, fleshy lice, knowing these characters – good and bad.”

Hunter, the game “basically about friendship and platonic male love, this is something I did not see much on the stage and screen,” he said.

“Yes, one of my favorite things about this game is one of my favorite things, there is a scene in which these characters build almost platonic relationships and reach a romantic level, and no, the platonic relationship is important, and I think it’s really good.”

Clarksston, who had previously been performed with another game of Hunter’s plays, received positive criticism from critics when he was staged in the USA.

“You feel that you listen to the intense special moments of people you don’t always like but deeply understand.” said Frank Scheck from Hollywood Reporter 2018 production.

“Towards the end, there is a encounter between Chris and his mother that shatters and encourages a scene as you will see on the stage. But the game ends with a sweet, hopeful note that smiles from the theater.”

Writing about a different production in 2024, Charles McNulty from La Times said: “Clarksston implies that some of our most instructive relationships can be the most temporary. This is one of the beautiful discoveries in Hunter’s small, absorbent and ultimately revitalizing game.”

Anyone who works at night shifts may be about the idea that early hours are often opened to each other and have a time when they have the deepest conversations.

Hunter argues that such an atmosphere results in a “more sensitive, more sincere” ground.

“When I was young, I had an experience of a Walmart,” he remembered, “and I saw that places like the break room were very sincere and vulnerable, I think you are in this very sterilized area, so I think the need for human connection has been made greater.”

Hunter had the idea of ​​writing the game while visiting his hometown of Moscow Idaho, about 30 miles from Clarkson, and began to deal with the “idea that the American West is still young” Following the purchase of Louisiana At the beginning of the 19th century.

“The markers of this history are still there,” Hunter said, “but they’re right next to things like Costcos and gas stations and mini -shopping centers.

“So he concerned me with the experiment of the American West and the colonial history and what it meant in 2025.”

The new production will be ruled by Jack Serio, who previously directed Grangeville, one of Hunter’s plays, and Ruridh Mollica and Sophie Melville starring Chris and his mother.

Locke was previously on the stage in London’s Donmar warehouse and Sweeney Todd’s Broadway production.

The actor said that being a theater actor was “what I want more than anything.”

“I am from the island of Man,” he explained, “and every year my birthday was a trip to London with my mother to watch a few shows, so West End will be a very complete apartment to bring my mother to my first exit, it will be very exciting.”

Locke has appeared in Neflix’s three seasons of Heartstopper since its launch in 2022. The demonstration followed Charlie and Nick, two young boys who fell into each other in secondary school. Locke spoke with BBC News while on the set and drew a movie adaptation.

“It’s great, now we’re almost two -thirds of the shooting path, and everything is going well, the wood is going well,” he said.

“We have a great time to do this, a really good closing part of the story.”